True, but I didn't argue that these things made anybody a good cop. I didn't evenmention these examples in the article. That's why I didn't even reply to this part of your comment. Obviously nobody in their right mind would say that a good cop makes these mistakes.

But the logical conclusion of your argument about what constitutes a "good cop" is that only a tiny fraction of human beings (if any) could reliably do the job to the standard you want. I'd rather have 800,000 cops who are good enough to prevent crime, even if they don't always go that extra mile. Than 800 cops who are perfect but completely overwhelmed.

Solving problems of this size requires us to be realistic about how well it's possible to do the job. So yes, recognising that cops are human beings is absolutely the point. They're fallible, sometimes they're selfish, sometimes they're too afraid to rock the boat. Sometimes they're just plain assholes.

Of course I agree that in an ideal world this wouldn't be the case, but demanding this standard doesn't move us forward. The standard has to be set around what a human cop will do because, for the time being, humans are the only option we have. So instead of complaining about a lack of perfection we are never going to get, we should focus on the systems. It seems we agree on that part though.